Fitness Can Take Work: Companies Realize Fit Employees are Happy Employees

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IT'S NO SECRET that high-stress desk jobs can lead to highly sedentary workdays, but Audrey Babkirk, for one, can't relate. The self-professed "lazy" 30-year-old was little more than a sporadic exerciser when she took a job as online editor at the Motley Fool in Alexandria.

Fast-forward two and a half years: Babkirk arrives at the office three times a week at 7:30 a.m. for an hour-long "boot camp" with a personal trainer — a perk subsidized by the Motley Fool — and practices yoga regularly, an interest she cultivated via office yoga sessions.

Babkirk's colleague, senior analyst James Early, takes advantage of other fitness benefits their employer offers, such as equipping his Kingstowne home with exercise and gymnastic equipment (kettlebell, parallel lateral bars) on the company's dime, using the annual $1,200 wellness allowance. "I have a baby, so I don't have time to go to the gym," says Early, 32, who instead squeezes short workouts into his schedule before and after work. "I have less time than I've ever had before, but exercising every day has made me make the best use of it." And when he finds himself waffling on a work project mid-day, he shoots hoops in the game room to get back on track.

These Motley Fool employees aren't the only ones getting healthier and more fit, thanks to their place of work.

"There's been a growing drumbeat of evidence over the past five years or so that says having healthy employees, and even dependents, is advantageous to employers," says Helen Darling, president of the D.C.-based National Business Group on Health. "People who are healthy are absent less often and don't stay out as long when they are out. They're also more resilient and engaged at work." The Wellness Council of America says 70 percent of Americans' chronic diseases — and medical claims — are lifestyle-driven. The American Institute of Stress claims job stress alone adds up to more than $300 billion annually for U.S. companies. As a result, employers nationwide are beefing up their body of wellness perks.

In effect, healthy workers can act as lifelines for a company's bottom line. According to the Alliance for Workplace Excellence, research shows every $1 a company invests in wellness programs saves at least $4 in reduced health care costs. As such, economic woes have actually strengthened the push for wellness programs.

"It's smart, prudent business sense to take care of employees so they take care of the company," says Brenda Loube, co-founder of Corporate Fitness Works, a national health and fitness program provider with its business office in Montgomery Village in Maryland. "If you ask an employer if they value their greatest asset, which is their employees, then, to me, it's a given they're going to have some type of wellness, and, hopefully, fitness incentives. It becomes a retention and recruitment tool."

Case in point: Loube runs a fitness program for Westat, a contract research organization headquartered in Rockville, which recently opened a 5,000-square-foot fitness center that serves more than 600 employees who signed up for a subsidized membership. Other employees vie for prizes in the Walker's Challenge after logging a certain number of miles or steps on free pedometers handed out at work. Prizes range from cash to weekend resort stays to new TV sets.

A decade ago, employers would install a small gym and brag about their wellness program. Now companies have learned that not only should they provide fitness equipment, but they also need to motivate employees to use it. That's where fitness professionals join the circuit. Tom Kalka, president of Custom Fitness Concepts in Potomac Fall, helps whip office workers into shape by leading on-site corporate boot camps and machine tutorials. "Often a company will have a fitness facility in the company that nobody uses, because nobody knows how to use the equipment," he says, "So, I'll go in and say, 'This is a lat pull-down machine. This is how you set your weights; here are some modifications.'"

A couple years ago, the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development hired Ellen Yates, founder of McLean-based fitness company N2Shape to lead 5 a.m. subsidized exercise classes four days a week at its free on-site wellness center. In addition, ASCD sends employees a monthly health newsletter, sponsors recreational sports teams for Alexandria city leagues and holds an annual health fair. "We have people who don't even look like themselves, because they got into walk clubs with co-workers and they're dropping dress sizes," says Catlin Power, manager of compensation and benefits.

This past May, the Washington metro area was ranked the fittest city (of the country's 50 most populous) by the American Fitness Index. If you ask Walter Thompson, chair of the AFI's advisory committee, hard-driving Washingtonians are likely healthier because of their worker-bee image — not in spite of it. "Hard-driving people typically take good care of themselves," Thompson explains. "They're as obsessive about their health as they are their jobs."

Written by Express contributor Katie Knorosvsky
Photos by Jason Hornick for Express